Friday, 18 May 2012

Untitled (Papeles de una novia que se dio un tiro porque su novio la dejó en el altar): photo by Enrique Metinides, 1964 (Blum & Poe, Los Angeles) "At the same time that they appear immediate and visceral, Metinides’
photos also display the formal economy of a professional storyteller. In
a piece entitled Papeles de una novia que se dio un tiro porque su novio la dejo en al altar,
we are relayed the story of a bride who has shot herself in the head
after her fiancé failed to appear at their wedding -- a near-universal
narrative, packed into a hazy black-and-white shot of a few bloodstained
personal effects and a pistol." --Kathryn Garcia, Dias de los Muertos

Ceramic
representation of Mictlantecuhtli, Aztec god of the dead and king of
Mictlan (Chicunauhmictlan), lowest and northernmost section of the
underworld, recovered during excavation of the House of Eagles in the
Templo Mayor, now on display at the museum of the Templo Mayor, Mexico
City: photo by Thelmadatter, 23 March 2008

Was it for this only that I came?

To fade away like the flowers?

Nothing left of my name?

Nor of the days I have spent on earth?

At least my flowers, at least my songs!

from Cantos de Huexotzingo: Nahuatl original attributed to Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin, aka Aguila Blanca de Tecamachalco (The White Eagle of Tecamachalco), in ms. collected in early 16th c. (English: TC)

Nahuatl Huexotzincocodex (panel four), made in 1531 by Nahua Indians in a legal case in Mexico and Spain
against Spanish administrators who abused them. The Indians were part
of the Cortes estate. Cortes was a co-plantiff against the
administrators who mismanaged his estate.

The Huexotzinco Codex is an eight-sheet document
on amatl, a pre-European paper made in Mesoamerica. It
is part of the testimony in a legal case against representatives
of the colonial government in Mexico, ten years after the Spanish
conquest in 1521. Huexotzinco (Way-hoat-ZINC-o) is a town southeast
of Mexico City, in the state of Puebla. In 1521, the Nahua Indian
people of the town were the allies of the Spanish conqueror Hernando
Cortés, and together they confronted their enemies to overcome
Moctezuma, leader of the Aztec Empire.

After the conquest, the Huexotzinco peoples became part of Cortés' estates.
During 1529-1530 when Cortés was out of the country, Spanish
colonial administrators intervened in the daily activities of
the community and forced the Nahuas to pay excessive taxes in
the form of goods and services. When Cortés returned, the
Nahuas joined him in a legal case against the abuses of the Spanish
administrators.

The plaintiffs were successful in their suit in Mexico, and later
when it was retried in Spain. The record shows that
in 1538, King Charles of Spain agreed with the judgement against
the Spanish administrators and ruled that two-thirds of all tributes
taken from the people of Huexotzinco be returned. (Harkness Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress)

Panel 1 of the 1531 Nahuatl Huexotzinco Codex, showing image of the Virgin with Child and symbolic representation of the taxes paid.

This document, or codex, is a precise accounting in graphic images
and recorded testimony of many of the products made by the people
of Huexotzinco and paid as tribute. These products included corn
(maize), turkeys, chili peppers, and beans, as well as bricks, lumber,
limestone, and woven cloth. The accountants also included the amount
of gold and feathers used to produce a banner of the Madonna and
Child for a Spanish military campaign. This representation of the
Madonna and Child is one of the earliest to be produced in the Americas. (Harkness Collection,Manuscript Division, Library of Congress)

Nahua Numbering System

= 20

= 20 turkeys

= 400

= 400 bushels of corn

= 8,000

= 8,000 chili peppers

= 1 load of adobe bricks

= 1 load of lime

.

= 1 load of lumber

"My grandmother died in 1991. She lived over 95 years and she loved to
paint landscapes. I am fortunate to have one of her paintings. The
painting was framed in a simple and inexpensive manner. It had a cheap
wooden frame. The matting around the painting was green burlap
material. The backside was a brown paper Piggly Wiggly grocery bag
glued to the edges of the wooden frame. My grandmother always re-used
materials in this manner. Recently my wife and I decided to have this painting properly framed so
that we might proudly display it. While removing the painting from the
old frame, we discovered a poem on the back of a blank check in my
grandmother's handwriting. It was glued to the backside of the
painting and then covered by the brown paper bag. I am convinced that
she left this as a message to those of us that survived her. I was struck by this poem. She must have known that the painting would
last beyond her years. She wanted to leave this to us, and to let us
know that this was her way to leave a part of herself to us after her
death... How did my grandmother know of this poem? It is fairly obscure, and
most translations are in Spanish. Did she see it in a book? a
magazine? a newspaper? This is a mystery, which we will never solve." --Chris Guinn, 13 November 2003

HotelRegis, after the 1985earthquake: photo by EnriqueMetinides, 1985 (via American Suburb X)

This fragment has stayed with me ever since I first read it in 1969 on the wall of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. I couldn't bear to quote the last beautiful line in the context of the dark pictures from Chapultepec Park. It's even better in Nahuatl:

White Eagle of Tecamachalco lives on, thanks to the labyrinthine passage of this poem through many other lives, including Chris, and his grandmother, and Tom, and now numerous others. His lament on the ephemeral life seems also an attempt to anchor himself in time and memory—and this self-blessing has met with considerable success. We know of him today because his words have such power and resonance that other people, hearing and reading them, re-transmit the signal, acting like repeater stations down the centuries.

So this is how I must go?Like the flowers that perished?Will nothing remain in my name?Nothing of my passage here on earth?At least flowers, at least songs!

Reading back into the Spanish translations of Nahuatl songs, one imagines souls passing in the mist along the shore, on both sides of the border between histories and worlds, equivocating about returning.

In the mists and distances that keep us apart from these flowers, these songs, can we make out the the footsteps of The Departed?

What Chris saw written on the wall -- does the meaning remain hidden from us?

By the way -- very moving this: "...re-transmit the signal, acting like repeater stations down the centuries."

With characteristic acuity Hazen (who often sees what's going on here more clearly than I do) thus gives a terrific condensed version of the recursive "action" of this post -- the transmission circuit including the signal sent by the White Eagle, the woman in another century framing the Nahuatl poem on a ship-in-a-bottle blank check on the back of a landscape, and we here reading (or dreaming?) the same poem now ...